Monday, February 29, 2016

I read a lot of articles and books on productivity, and keep
looking for anything that will help me to add to my existing knowledge. Today
however, I wanted to take stock of the most important lessons I have learnt
from various productivity books and online articles, and the things that have
worked best for me, to help me make the most of the time I am working.

1.Work
While You're Working

The biggest lesson I have learned, and something most
productivity gurus will tell you as well, is that multi-tasking does not work. In fact, there is no
such thing as multi-tasking, not really.

When you read a text message while you're working on a
report for your boss, you aren't reading your messages and working on that report. You're reading your messages. Then
you're working on the report. And then you're reading your messages again. In
essence, you are switching between
tasks, not the same thing as doing two tasks at once. And what happens when you
switch – each time you use up a ton of energy, energy that is no longer
available for you to actually work on the task. Research shows that when you
switch between different tasks, you actually increase the time it takes for
each task by a 100%, that is, it takes you twice as long to complete the task.
And you increase the rate of errors by 100% too. That's really not efficient at
all, is it?

Solution: work on whatever you are working on, without
distractions. Even the sound of an email or message coming in, even when you
don't actually check the message, can distract you and take you out of the
focused state. However, the plus point of working in a focused manner? You have
more chance of being in a flow state,
where you are able to concentrate better, work with more creativity, and
generally enjoy your work more.

2.Stop
Using Your Head (For Keeping Lists)

This is the classic advice from David Allen, the famed
productivity guru: to write down everything rather than try to keep it all in
your head. Productivity advice is almost synonymous with the advice to be
super-organized, have the latest planning software and to-do list apps and the
whole shebang. And anyone not completely comfortable with this level of
color-coded bliss, thinks they can skip the whole list craziness and use the
old-fashioned method – keeping things in their head. Or writing them down
wherever they happen to find a scrap of paper.

Well, I am not advocating anal levels of planning here, but
at the same time, not having a system not only is a recipe for disaster, it
will actually make you miles less productive. Here's why. Your brain can only
keep so many things in what is called the working
memory, or the part of your brain that tells you that you have a meeting at
4pm today. It might remember that, but if you tack on 4 other meetings, and a
birthday gift to shop for, and needing to remember to start working on that
crucial project, something will fall out of the list. Besides, trying to keep
all that in your head, you won't have the brainpower to devote to the
higher-level sort of planning and thinking that actually makes you good at your
job, or at school, or in your extra-curricular projects.

Solution: find the simplest, easiest method that you will
follow, and stick to it. After trying many different apps, I settled on using
Wunderlist, where I have lists for work and home, and sub-divided by
category. To start with however, I would recommend one home and one work list,
as well as a someday list for work (where you can put in projects that you
would like to work on in the near future, or even stuff you would like to
tackle next month, that you don’t want cluttering up your current list) and a
someday list for home / personal (where you can list ideas for personal
projects, books you want to read, or places you want to visit alone or with
family). This isn't the only option, there are dozens of methods out there.
However, I suggest it is more important to start somewhere than spend days on
selecting the best tool for you. The important thing is to get everything out
of your head and onto a paper or digital capturing tool, so that you can devote
your head space to actually completing the tasks, and not just trying to
remember them.

Image credit: pixabay.com

3.Plan
Your Work

The next step after creating an on-going list of everything
you need to do, is making a list of what you need to do today. David Allen
advises against making daily to-do lists, as work is organic and what was a
priority when you were making the list may be pushed aside by something else. I
agree, which is why my Wunderlist lists are separated by type of work and not
date (although you can set deadlines with each task if needed). At the same
time, I find that sitting down to work on a day with only a vague idea of
getting through my to-do lists isn’t particularly effective, and I get easily
derailed by other things.

Solution: The way I deal with this is to scribble a
tentative to-do list on a sheet of paper at the beginning of the day, or
sometimes the night before. I put down all the external obligations and
meetings I have. And anything that is due today and absolutely has to get done.
Then I add in what I think I can accomplish or I would like to accomplish.
Invariably I don’t get to everything on the list, and I usually just plonk the
list down somewhere, walk away and forget about it. Still, I notice that the
very act of making the list acts as a subconscious trigger and I get more things
done than the days I make a list in my head, but neglect to actually write it
down.

4.Break
Down Projects Into Doable Bites

How do you eat an elephant? The answer to that old cliché as
you know, is one bite at a time. This advice can apply to any project, but especially
to projects that are so big or complicated that you find it difficult to even
know where to start.

Aside from breaking projects into pieces, another piece of
advice that I found very useful is to separate different types of tasks. For instance,
writing and editing. Or doing research and then writing up that research. The reason
to separate different types of tasks is that research from neuroscience has
found that it takes up a lot more energy for the brain to switch to one type of
task to another one, and as we read before, switching wastes energy. So following
the assembly line principle, its far easier and more efficient for you to break
up the project into the kinds of things you need to do, and group similar tasks
or do all of one kind of task before moving on to another.

Solution: Write a list of everything you need to do for the
project, and add the list to your favorite list manager. Or create a separate
list for the project. Be sure to group based on types of tasks – for instance,
send all the emails requesting information from department managers at one go.

5.Don’t
Work All The Time

This is strange advice on a post on working more. Except the point is that it isn’t
about working more. It is about working more effectively. And it is hard to
work effectively and work long hours, without replenishing your energy. Not only
hard, but not recommended.

In fact, this is a mistake I made when I was in grad school.
I was taking every difficult course I could, trying to make the most of the
awesome opportunity presented by attending an Ivy League school. I arrived at
the library almost as it opened in the morning, and stayed till evening, came
home, made dinner, and started to study again, till late at night. I took
breaks only to go to class, my part-time job, or grocery shopping. And school-related
meetings. Eventually I would rebel against my self-imposed schedule, and have a
day of just watching endless episodes of some TV show. Not the greatest way to
renew my energy. Now that I'm wiser (and away from the environment of
everyone's wacky schedules), I can see that there were much better ways to
replenish one's energy and get motivated to get back to work.

Solution: make a list of the kinds of things you like to do
that are really relaxing, and don’t involve plopping in front of the TV. Preferably
some of these activities involve getting some exercise, like taking a walk on a
scenic route, or playing basketball with friends, or even visiting some of your
city's tourist spots. Author Laura Vanderkam recommends making a list of 100
dreams, and planning your leisure time just like you plan your work. This leads
to more fun memories and more motivation to get back to work.

Hope these five tips culled from reading dozens of books
help you to become far more productive this year. We are only two months into
2016 – let's really make this year count!

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Saturday, February 27, 2016

You know when you want to do something, like write a novel,
but you aren't sure whether you can pull it off? So you think about it, you
talk about it, you read books about it, but the one thing you don’t do, is
actually sit down and write.

Now I know a lot of people would think – ah, you're lazy. That’s
why you talk about doing something, but never get around to doing it. I don’t think
you are lazy though. I don’t think I am either. It isn’t laziness that holds us
back from doing something that is important to us, but is still something that
we never make time for. Have you heard that saying – if it is important to you,
you make time for it?

Well, in this case, that saying is wrong. I have read every
tough love piece of advice out there regarding writing, and I can tell you,
bullying or coercing yourself to sit down and do something that for some reason
you can't even imagine doing, isn’t the solution. You know why? Because you are
held back by fear. Fear of the unknown. You don’t know how to write a book. You
don’t have a blueprint. You have no clue how to go from the vague storyline in
your head, to the first sentence that you type into your computer. Or the next
sentence. Or the one just before you type "The End".

The problem is that because you technically know how to put
together a sentence, you assume that you know how to write a book. It is like
me saying that because I know how to beat an egg, I can make a Beef Wellington.
That's a big leap to make. But it doesn’t mean that I can never learn how to make a Beef Wellington. Or that
you can't learn how to write a novel.

It's just that you can't use the same method for both.

There are no recipes for writing a novel. There are no
videos you can watch. But that doesn't mean that you are doomed to be an aspiring novelist forever.

Here's the thing with writing. Unlike cooking, you get many
do-overs. And much like making pancakes, you have to discard the first one. Don’t
start the process thinking that you are going to write a brilliant book that
will change the course of the universe. If that happens, amazing! Please send
me a signed copy of your book. But what's more likely, you will write something
that has some potential, some really great bits, and a lot of meh – stuff you
need to fix or throw out. But that's fine, because you will have a finished draft.

So although this post says that it will tell you how to
write a novel, I think it's more accurate to say, how to write a finished
draft.

1.Keep
It Simple

Keep the premise of the story
simple. You are a beginner, learning to juggle characters, setting and plot. You
don’t need to bring in the cast of War and Peace, or decide to do original
research in the backroom of the Library of Congress to write your novel. Start with
something that is familiar to you in some way. Take your idea and simplify it. I'm
not suggesting you make it boring, just doable, unless you want to complete
your first draft in the summer of 2020.

2.Put
Away the Red Pen

Give your inner editor a holiday.
The reason that Nanowrimo is so popular is that the crazy schedule of writing a
novel in a month forces you to disentangle the process of writing from editing.
You can go back and worry that the timeline is off and your characters are inauthentic,
once you have a draft. For now, just keep going, other than to correct minor
typos. Even better, if you do have an idea for how to make the scene better,
instead of deleting what you have, just write it again from the new angle. Keep
both scenes and decide later which one is better. For now, just keep going.

3.Draw
From Experience

Creating a whole new world is challenging
enough, make it easier on yourself and draw on your own life experience
wherever possible. Julia Cameron always says that writing is large enough to
hold anything you throw at, so don’t be afraid to put in stuff from your life. While
writing my Nanowrimo novel last year, I was desperate for anything that would
help me to make up my word count since I was hideously behind. I shamelessly
cribbed whatever was going on in my own life and chucked it into the novel; for
instance, the characters met properly for the first time at the gym, only
because I was spending a lot of time at my gym at the time, and found it easy
to write that scene.

4.Don't
Write Chronologically

One of the main reasons I couldn’t
complete my book ideas for many years is because I mistakenly thought that I had
to write the book in chronological order – you know, "begin at the
beginning, go on till the end, then stop". That may be how the reader reads the book, but that is no
reason for you to write that way. I spent months trying to figure out the first
scene, the opening sentence. And it didn’t help that I read articles about how
important it was that the introduction really hooks the reader, that you must
convey the essence and flavor of the story in that first page. All that is
true, but what I didn’t know, is that you don’t need to do that now. When you're just starting out writing,
you don’t know what will make a good opening scene. Forget about that first
sentence. For now, you just need to have something written. One scene. Any scene.
The ones that you know you will include. The ones that make you excited about
the book. Go ahead and write those.

As you put down the things that
come to you, more ideas will get sparked from your writing. Sitting frozen imagining what you will write won't get
you any closer to a completed manuscript. Writing it will. Put down whatever
you can think of, and after you have
a finished draft, you can worry about that perfect opening scene.

So there you have it. The four things I did to help me
finally write a complete draft of my first novel, as well as how I completed
six non-fiction books. Every time I start a new draft of a new book, I still
feel fear. I still put it off. I still dream of getting the book published and
how amazing it will feel. And then, I start writing. Because nothing can help
you become a published author if you never actually go ahead and write that
first draft.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

I was writing answers for yet another interview about my
writing, and one of the questions made me think. I didn't think the short space
within an interview gave me enough room to write in the detail I wanted, so I decided
to write about it here.

The question: what books and authors have influenced your
writing? Ok, so that's not exactly the question I am answering here. Because to
tell you the truth, I think every book I have ever read has in some way
influenced my writing. It is one of those osmosis-type things; you subliminally
take in cues without even realizing you are doing it. There have been however,
a few books, that have changed the way I write, or in some way influenced my
writing, so profoundly, that I want to highlight them, hoping they can help
someone else. Some of these books have been featured on my blog, so where they
have, I have linked the title to the post in question.

This book is my writing bible. I keep going back to it
whenever I start to feel the onset of the writer's version of impostor
syndrome. Why did I think I could write? What if I have been deluding myself? What
if this book is crap and no one reads it? What if this book is crap and people
read it and then tell me that it is crap?

You know what I mean? The spool of fear and doubt whirling
around in your brain. When that gets too loud and too paralyzing, I take out my
copy of the book and start to page through it, and inevitably calm down.
Julia's sage and simple advice never fails to restore me – the origin of your
work is you. Therefore it is original. You have something to say, and therefore
it is important that you say it. Everyone is creative if only we allow
ourselves to be.

This book is full of timeless advice that can benefit any
creative person (not just for writers) on any part of their creative
trajectory, beginner or professional.

A relatively recently published book, this book is bursting with compassionate guidance, and full of useful tricks for anyone stuck on a difficult project and wishing they could simply abandon it and run away. This happens to me so often, that I have almost memorized some of its passages.

Rettig advises writers to abandon any notion of starting at the beginning, and going straight on doggedly till the end. She gives you permission to start anywhere, stop, and move one elsewhere. Do what's easy. Uncomplicate your project. Make sure you have enough resources. Fortify yourself with snacks. That last one is mine, but I am sure she would approve. Do whatever you need to get through the project, and solve each problem one at a time, slowly, without pressure. Remember, you are taking on a tough project, and don't make it harder than it needs to be.

This last one is not a writing book. But it is written by an incredible writer, who never fails to lift my spirits. Her characters are well-rounded and interesting, but in this collection of essays by Keyes, you get to peek behind the curtain and get to know the writer herself, who is far more interesting than her figments of imagination.

Keyes' light-hearted tone and easy turn of phrase inspires me to let my own personality through into my writing. When I get stressed about what to say, I become more stiff, and so does my prose, like my writing has put on a starched, tight shirt. Perhaps I am reminded of my English teachers in school, who were never happy unless we used the most bland language. Any flights of fancy were firmly curtailed, and I think the vestiges of their influence still live within my inner editor. Reading Keyes' sentences, full of words that I have never even encountered before and don't know the meaning of, shakes up my own vocabulary, giving it a little pep and lift.

4. Developmental Editing - Scott NortonI love this book, which I stumbled upon last year and have discussed elsewhere on this blog. The book is geared towards those actually working as DEs (developmental editors) in publishing, but it is invaluable insight for authors, especially for those writing non-fiction. There isn't much for non-fiction authors out there, so this book is great especially for that reason. Reading this book really helped me to create a much better structure for my most recent book Anyone Can Get An A+, as well as to generally understand how to think about structure, something I have always struggled with. I highly recommend it.

This is just a partial list, and as I think of more I will add to it. What are your favorite writing books, or what books have changed your writing for the better? I would love to hear your comments.